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Is my client right to do this?

A friend who is a CIO at a company asked me to submit a quote for their new office. I submitted a quote for Cat6 cabling, IT room infrastructure, firewall and VoIP PBX. The owner of the company wanted to go a different route, and so he had someone else run the Cat 6. Without my knowledge, they actually moved into the new space, but the guys who ran the Cat6 actually left about 20Ft extra cable in the IT room, and they put RJ-45 ends on all the plugs which were plugged directly into the switches. The IT room was a mess, with Cat6, power cables and garbage all over the place, the rack wasn't even bolted to the floor. My friend hired me to organize the room and punch down the cables etc., and they also needed a firewall for their new fiber Internet connection because the cable connection was going down every 5 minutes (bad gateway). I had quoted them on a new firewall months before, but they didn't act on it, so in the interim I loaned them a used firewall. I also realized that another contractor and competitor (preferred by the boss) was on site doing the TVs, audio etc.So here I was in an IT room much smaller than what was proposed, shared with a big @ss AC unit, trying to cut, route and punch down Cat6 cable in a production environment.As things started to take shape, the clutter began to clear up, but on the fourth day of the firewall being installed, it failed. I asked my tech who was on site to remove it and switch back to the Cable Internet connection, which was still cutting out every 5 minutes because my friend had failed to call the cable company and ask them to replace it.I went to a local store and got a brand new firewall and installed it on the fiber connection, but later in the day that also failed, so they went back to the cable connection.I was advised by my friend that his boss was hopping mad, and that we should not come back on site until things had cooled down. When I did go back on site, my tools and materials were missing, and my friend said that his boss decided to "clean up the room" because it was a mess. I told him it was an active job site, and no one should have interfered with my work, which was not complete. I made it clear that I would have cleaned up the pieces of cut cable after finishing the job, and that the IT room was a locked room with restricted access, so it was not an eyesore to the public, besides, they should have forwarded any concerns to me, not interfere with my job site. Do you think I was set up to fail?

Totally agree

A) As long as you are a contracted supplier of goods/services, your tools can be on-site. If they never delivered notice of termination of the contract, they are responsible for your tools/materials that you brought. If they don't give you back those things, I'd suggest having an attorney send them a letter itemizing everything at "new" (retail pricing) cost.

B) This guy that is your "friend" sounds more like he was getting his "friend" to do work cheap to get him off the hook and get brownie points with his boss...which he bailed on you in the end when things didn't go to *his* plan for smooching the boss' backside best.

I hope you get your stuff back, and get a hardy fee out of them for all the time you wasted trying to help them.

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